Can’t work out how to decorate reception venue

[Thrivenotsurvive]

Hi,

I’m getting married in October and panicking about how to decorate our reception venue. We are getting married at 3pm and have just discovered that we can’t get in to decorate the reception until 3pm 🤦🏻‍♀️ I think there was some misunderstanding on our part and we thought we could get in there earlier - too late to moan now as everything else has been booked/deposits paid etc

Neither of us have big families so all close relatives will be at the ceremony, we are then travelling to the reception venue for a few drinks and then a party - nothing fancy, no sit down meal etc.

The party will then have friends, work colleagues etc joining us but some live further away so no chance of them doing it

I’m stressing so much. I have 2 friends who have said they can help but my other option is us all leave the ceremony, go to the venue and dress it ourselves while we wait for party guests to arrive. Asked my mum her opinion and she turned her nose up at it!

we could go with the option of not really dressing it but it’s a clubhouse so quite old man style (sorry!)

do places hire out people who you can literally pay to dress a venue with your own decorations? All the places I’ve seen only other their own stuff for hire too

any suggestions would be very welcome, as you can tell by my ramblings I’m started to stress a bit 😂

[Smartiepants79]

Well I’m sure there will be someone in your area that runs a service that can do it for you for a price.
If you can only access the venue at 3pm (why? Thats really crap) how long will someone have to do it. Can’t be more than an hour or two and most?
If I was you I’d do a search on local facebooks for a party decorator and see what comes up.
What were you thinking. It’s going to have to be pretty simple and straightforward to put up as there isn’t really a lot of time.

[Smartiepants79]

Normally wedding venues are decked out hours of not days before hand. Mine was mostly done the day before apart from the flowers.

[Thrivenotsurvive]

We’re using a members only clubhouse so it will be in use up until 3pm. We’re not starting the party until 6.30 so a few hours in between but my 2 friends who can decorate will need to go home to get ready etc between dressing it and the party starting

we’re on a tight budget which is why we’re using the clubhouse and decorations won’t be more than chair sashes, tablecloths, tea lights, some balloons and scatter some confetti about probably!

[Thrivenotsurvive]

Really just party decorations rather than wedding reception iyswim

[Tisfortired]

That’s really rubbish @Thrivenotsurvive , we have a similar predicament at the moment, getting married in June at 11am. Reception venue about 15 mins away and wedding breakfast is at 13:00 with welcome drinks/pictures from 12. We won’t know until the week of the wedding whether the room will be available the night before for us to decorate or we’re going to have to somehow decorate first thing in the morning of the wedding!

Would it be an option for you to drop off your decorations at the venue the night before perhaps with some direction on how you’d like it done, and pay the club a little extra to do it for you? Surely they’d have a staff member with 30 mins an hour or so to do it for you from 3pm. Even if it costs a little extra it saves you the headache and stress on your wedding day.

[Smartiepants79]

So realistically you’ve got 2 people for a maximum of 2 hours.
Tips- plan it carefully, make sure they know what is going where, how it can be attached etc.
Buy an electric balloon pump, the best £20 I ever spent.
Have as much as can be done ready to just plop on things, tie the sashes if you can etc
And by the by, making your own balloon arches is really very easy and pretty cheap.
Buy packs on Amazon. They look very effective. If you can transport them they can be mostly done before hand

[HanSB]

If it’s in use until 3pm then you need to allow time for it to be cleaned before you decorate. The easiest option would be to ask the venue if you can pay a member of staff to set it up for you, give them a clear list of things that need to be done. If they don’t know it’s a wedding just say it’s a party to avoid extra ‘wedding’ fees

[Thrivenotsurvive]

Thank you guys so much - I didn’t even think of asking if someone working there could do it for us, and didn’t think about asking if we could drop things off the night before either

will definitely investigate this option!

[Thrivenotsurvive]

@Tisfortired sorry to hear you’re having similar worries - I never realised how stressful planning a simple wedding is 😂

[mumonthehill]

Do a practice setting at home and take pictures. Then give this to whom ever will do the decoration so they know what you want. Is there a storage area at the venue where you could leave it all the night before? If you want flowers on the tables you could bunch each one the night before leave in a bucket so they can just be dropped into the vases. You might have to be super organised!!

[Thrivenotsurvive]

Will call the venue and ask about storage and the practice photo is a great idea

I’m going for faux/dried flowers to keep costs down so won’t have to worry about keeping them fresh

DP is working the day before and I’m supposed to be, trying to arrange a shift swap - nothing like living on the edge 😂

[Tisfortired]

@Thrivenotsurvive

Will call the venue and ask about storage and the practice photo is a great idea

I’m going for faux/dried flowers to keep costs down so won’t have to worry about keeping them fresh

DP is working the day before and I’m supposed to be, trying to arrange a shift swap - nothing like living on the edge 😂

My DP doesn’t even have the day off yet for our wedding 🤣 fingers crossed 🤣

[Thrivenotsurvive]

@Tisfortired

My DP doesn’t even have the day off yet for our wedding 🤣 fingers crossed 🤣

Oh my god I would be pulling my hair out 🤣 and your wedding is way before mine! Keeping everything crossed for you 🤞🏻